3 minute readThe phrase ‘county cricket is an anachronism’ is an anachronism. The domestic game may have seemed irrelevant and redundant in the Eighties and Nineties, but it has chanced across a niche for itself since then. Seemingly against the odds, it has a place in the modern world. Short attention spans
Continue readingCategory: News
Chris Gayle’s core strength
2 minute readIt’s generally best to avoid writing about Chris Gayle, because he seems to draw admiration – and therefore blog comments – from the biggest dickheads on the planet. It’s not that there’s nothing to admire about Gayle’s batting. It’s just that a rich seam of knobheadery sits alongside rational, justifiable
Continue readingAdvantage to Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire in the County Championship
< 1 minute readWe’re going to stay on top of the County Championship this season. They’re not going to evade us by slipping matches in during Test matches or by pretending they’re in the middle of a long spell playing one of the shorter formats when they’re not. We’re staying focused. With that
Continue readingKing Cricket’s county players to watch in 2013
2 minute readThis article originally began: “Another year, another batch of middling cricketers, one of whom will get picked in some sort of performance squad giving us a very flimsy sense of having been right about something at least once in our life.” What prescience. Yesterday Rikki Clarke was included in a
Continue readingThe best players for a fantasy IPL team
< 1 minute readWe selected a fantasy IPL team on Cricinfo and were about to set up a league so that people could compete against us when we suddenly thought: ‘No, wait, this is bollocks.’ Do you want to know who the best players are for a Cricinfo fantasy IPL team? It’s whoever
Continue readingAustralia’s secret squad
< 1 minute readICC: Hi Australia, could you possibly name your long list of 30 players for the Champions Trophy. You don’t have to name your 15-man squad yet, just a bunch of players who might appear in it. Cricket Australia: No. ICC: Er, why not? Cricket Australia: Because that’s just what they’ll
Continue readingCoverage of the attack on Jesse Ryder
< 1 minute readIf you haven’t already seen, Jesse Ryder is in an induced coma after being assaulted. He has a fractured skull. We aren’t going to write too much about this, because the site is the wrong tone for that kind of news and therefore it just doesn’t seem appropriate. For similar
Continue readingTwo things wrong with the 2013 IPL
< 1 minute readLet’s start slowly. We’ve plenty of time. Two things for now. More may follow. 1. Adam Gilchrist is playing Adam Gilchrist is about 110 years old. More importantly, he is not a cricketer. He was once, but he isn’t any more. No cricket competition should field people who aren’t cricketers.
Continue readingWhat’s today’s barometer reading?
2 minute readSome read yesterday’s post as being criticism of Ian Bell, which wasn’t really how it was intended. We just feel that of all the England players, his performances are the ones that most closely correlate with how the team fares. On day five of the third Test against New Zealand,
Continue readingThe barometer says England never looked like winning
< 1 minute readTalk of an England win has been unjustifiably common during this Test. You never know what’s likely to happen in a match, but you can tailor conversation according to likelihood and at no point has an England victory seemed probable. Even talking about how they could possibly engineer a winning
Continue reading